Report of the Annual Session of the Georgia Bar Association Volume 8 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 edition. Excerpt: ...As between husband and wife the statute of limitation practically has no existence. When money is borrowed by the husband from a person outside the family it is generally upon business principles, involving an investigation of the borrower's resources, and if the resources appear inadequate, security is taken in the shape of personal indorsements or of liens upon property. It is only in the case of transactions between husbands and wives that money is borrowed and lent upon an indefinite understanding that at some convenient season it will be repaid, when it will suit the mutual convenience of both parties. The convenient season is usually the time when it becomes necessary to prefer the wife as a creditor in the face of threatened business trouble. It may be laid down as a general rule, with no considerable exception, that the husband will, in case of financial disaster, make his wife the preferred creditor to the full amount of his debt to her, with at least all the legal interest. Leaving entirely out of the consideration, for the present, that class of men who, in a pinch, are willing to set up fictitious debts to their wi ves, there are many cases where a man can truthfully set up a debt to his wife and proceed to pay up the debt with property which has given him credit in the commercial world, leaving his other creditors with only a sad experience. May it not then be laid down as a general rule that debts from husbands to wives are, ab initio, preferred debts? True, they are not in the shape of mortgages or other liens until it becomes necessary that they should be put in such shape for the purpose of savi ng the property for the family. It would be much better for the public that these claims of the wife were in the shape of recorded...